2007 Evesham Wood Illahee Vineyard Pinot Noir: Boy, this one really showed nicely nicely for a more obscure (discontinued?) bottling. Red fruited through and through. Focused and quite pretty with enough medium bodied texture to carry this elegant wine along to a spicy and satiny finish. Probably at an apex as this drank great from the second it was opened.
2007 Brick House Les Dijonnias Pinot Noir: This was the opposite of the above EW in terms of its open-ness and suggested this needs more time. Very clay and earth oriented that obscured the fruit for an hour or so then began to give way and at first turned to a bit of celery salt but that evaporated amazingly quickly and the darker side of Ribbon Ridge came to the fore. This is a surprisingly structured wine both in terms of acid and tannin but there is a wound up core of fruit that has heft to it that wants to come out at some point. Give this another 2 or 3 years. If you like taught stuff with some bottle age to it this will serve you very well.
2007 Cristom Marjorie Vineyard Pinot Noir: This was in between the two above wines. More complex than the Illahee and less wound up than the Brick House. Dark Eola styled fruit with underlying but certainly noticeable stem inclusion (positive for me). This has a lot of texture but definitely has grip toward the back that suggests further aging potential. Comes off now as pretty powerful and dark but not locked up but not also not necessarily as wide open as the nature of it indicates. Definitely fine to open but fine to salt away too.
2007 Evesham Wood Cuvée J Pinot Noir: An amped up version of the Illahee in the sense that this has great texture, spice and balance but this does it at a larger, more concentrated level without sacrificing the deft style. The most floral of the bunch with crushed raspberries mixing in to give complexity. Polished and sexy. This shows very wonderfully and I have a hard time seeing any Pinot Noir person not liking this one in the here and now. Very Russ Rainey. Loved this.
All in all these wines ran on the positive side of the 2007 gamut. Some tight, some probably at the height of their existence. But all very good and three showing between benefitting from more time to needing more time to show the stuffing within. Happy to drink them all although wish I hadn’t popped the Brick House as that was the last one I had and I would love to see that wine in 3-5 years.